ISLAMABAD – With growing U.S.-China tensions and with the rise of thesimplifying “Thucydides Trap” narrative, we are often tempted to perceivemany of Beijing actions as done deals, and as initiatives of far-reaching,strategic implications. The truth, as always, is that reality is complexand only time will tell. One of the stories that often flows on this hypeis that Pakistan’s civilian port of Gwadar – which is now being developedwith the help of Beijing – will become a Chinese naval base.
To be sure, I do think it would be natural, from a strategic perspective,for Beijing to start running a base for its navy in Pakistan *at some pointin the future*. But just because I believe so does not mean I can twist andcherry-pick evidence to prove it is already happening, The Diplomat hasreported.
Has Gwadar port become a base for the Chinese navy? There is no open sourceevidence for this and the current level of the port’s development wouldmake this rather impossible. There is also no public inter-governmentagreement or a statement of each of the governments available to prove thatIslamabad has handed over Gwadar – or is going to do so – for the use ofthe PLAN (the People’s Liberation Army Navy, i.e. the Chinese navy).
Many things may be kept secret of course, though in the case of Djibouti,we did learn of the agreement between the governments before the base wasofficially set up.
And can we find evidence that Gwadar is becoming a Chinese naval base? Asincere reply should once again be: no. In the last years, a few articleson this subject caused a wave of alarmist headlines across the global media(such as a *South China Morning Post* storylinkpublishedin January 2018). What they had in common, however, is that they referredto unnamed sources (such as people “close to the PLA”), to the opinions ofexperts, and to unverifiable stories (such as secret meetings betweenPakistani and Chinese officers).
That does not have to mean these accounts are untrue – it just makes themimpossible to corroborate. Most importantly, these texts talked of *plans* toestablish such a base, not of evidence that the Gwadar port is becoming onenow.
What can be said for sure is that presence of the Pakistani navy at the(still formally civilian) port of Gwadar is indeed growing. Pakistani navyships were already found to be docking at Gwadar, both spotted bysatellites and simply reported by the country’s press. In December 2016,the Pakistani navy created Task Force-88 link toprotect the sea lanes coming to and from Gwadar. Navy vessels have thusbeen arriving at Gwadar escorting transport ships (which does not mean theycould not appear there for other reasons as well).
In March 2018, for instance, Gwadar welcomed its first container vessellink (MS *Tiger),* in the company of two navy ships, PNS *Dehshat* and PNS*Karar*. There are also Pakistani soldiers stationed at Gwadar and one oftheir responsibilities is to protect the Chinese citizens who are workingon the port’s development.
Very importantly, a November 2018 brave investigative piece by Maqbool Ahmedlink published in a Pakistan journal, the*Herald*, presents evidence for a broad land acquisition drive by thePakistani navy around Gwadar.
The story should have gained global publicity at the scale of the *SouthChina Morning Post* piece — it deserved recognition much more than thelatter — but it has not. The *Herald* has been closed since then. It a yetanother instance of how local journalism often finds it hard to competewith reputed international papers, even in the cases when the former isbased on risky, ground-level investigation and the latter on secureconversations with easily accessible sources.
Maqbool Ahmed claimed that the navy is acquiring property (and establishingcheckpoints) not only close to Gwadar (in its lagoon) but even much furtherinland. The scope of this process would suggest that the country’s navalforces are preparing to entrench themselves in Gwadar.
Read Top Stories
All of this relates to the presence of the Pakistani navy, not the Chineseone, however. A visit by the Chinese navy elsewhere in Pakistan wouldhardly be surprising by now given the countries’ relations – as in the caseof a July 2018 storylinkoftwo PLAN submarines in Karachi – but open source material does not provethat Chinese vessels have been using Gwadar. The only Chinese armed vesselsthat have certainly come to Gwadar were the two patrol ships (PMSS *Basol*link and PMSS *Hingol*link) that Pakistan actually purchased fromBeijing link, received in 2017, and taskedwith protecting Gwadar and its vicinity.
Is there any verifiable evidence of the Chinese at least planning to useGwadar as a naval base? Not really. It could be pointed out, however, thatwhile China provided loans for a number of projects in and around Gwadar(and throughout Pakistan), in 2015 Beijing changed the loanslinkintointerest-free grants in two cases: the construction of the Gwadar airportand the Eastbay Expressway Project.
The expressway will connect the city to the airport and the regionalhighway. The “soft” explanation would be that the PRC added these grants asa freebie, a sweetener, as Pakistan borrowed heavily from China for thesake of Gwadar’s development anyway.
The “hard” interpretation would be that Gwadar’s infrastructure is soimportant for China that it is willing to partially finance it. Thecounterpoint to the latter interpretation is that the sum of these twogrants is only $370 million and the Eastbay Expressway is to be only 19kilometers long. These projects and their financial conditions can hardlybe considered strategic game-changers by themselves.
To be sure, by “evidence,” I do not mean the broad strategicconsiderations. I am aware of the wide discussion on how much, given itslocation, Gwadar could be useful for PLAN, and there is no need to refer tothese debates here. A base the size of Gwadar, remote and unsafe as itsarea is now, would be a natural choice for both China and Pakistan. It isone of the farthest bays on the Pakistan’s coast toward the west, asdistant from the rival state of India as possible. It would also help tosecure the vital sea shipping routes.
But these are speculations based on why could Gwadar work as a naval base* andnot* *evidence that such a base is under construction*. The evidence, sofar, is to the contrary – it seems that what is being constructed atGwadar’s port are facilities that could be primarily used for economic andcivilian purposes, and not the machinery needed for maintenance of largenaval vessels.
Under the impressive carpet of words, the tall talk of the Belt and RoadInitiative, the String of Pearls, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,Gwadar still remains a remote, provincial city with its port currentlyunder development.
It is very poorly connected to the rest of the country, it is not aneconomic hub by any standard, and so far faces very mundane problems, suchas a shortage link of waterand power (not to speak of the threat for Baloch armed groups, which in May2019 have shown the capacitylinktostrike targets even within Gwadar city).
It not only does not serve a strategic military role now but also itssignificance as a future transportation hub remains to be verified. Maybethe PLAN does have a plan for Pakistan, but it is not being unveiled justyet.
